Dogecoin charity funds another team for 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics

Earlier this month, the cryptocurrency called Dogecoin, based on the amusing Doge meme, managed to raise more than $30,000 in Dogecoin donations, sending the Jamaican bobsled team to the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. The good deeds haven’t ended there, however, and now the generous digital miners have donated the funds needed to send a team from India to the winter games.

Dogecoin is a strange cryptocurrency phenomenon, started as little more than a joke and having little value (compared to Bitcoin), yet it took off on Reddit and some other online places. Those who mined some of the coins have used them as a sort of Internet currency for tipping, yet it has quickly evolved into a way to offer up funds to those in need.

It started when news surfaced of three Indian athletes who needed funds to attend the 2014 Winter Olympics: Shiva Keshavan, a luge athlete, and the skiing duo Himanshu Thakur and Nadeem Iqbal. India’s government managed to raise the funds needed to send Keshavan, but the other two, it was reported, only had 3/4th of the needed funds raised, and India’s Winter Games Federation secretary general was quoted as saying he wasn’t sure how to get the rest needed. He quipped that perhaps a miracle would happen

It was perhaps such optimism that spurred others to action. A link was posted on Reddit and a day later, the rest of the funds — more than $7,000 — have been raised, according to the Dogecoin Foundation. One of those donations totaled $4700. Research is currently being performed to determine how best to provide the funds.